Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

What’s Wrong with the World
is dedicated to the defense of
what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of
the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the
Jihad and Liberalism...read more

An ambiguous conservative

It appears The American Conservative is making some of their archived content freely available online. For those who might be interested, here is a review I wrote for them some years back of An Imaginative Whig: Reassessing the Life and Thought of Edmund Burke, edited by Ian Crowe. As the review indicates, Burke’s sometimes ambiguously conservative thought raises questions about precisely what conservatism is and exactly how it relates to tradition – questions that are especially pressing today, when some conservatives are advising their fellows to abandon the cause of upholding certain aspects of traditional morality in the interests of preserving electoral viability. These are questions I have addressed elsewhere – for example, in this post about conservatism and tradition and this article about the metaphysical foundations of conservatism.

Comments (15)

Burke articulated a cogent response to the French Revolution and that has come to define conservatism. The metaphysical foundations of conservatism is not the same in every nation. Adam Heinrich Mueller's work on political philosophy, Elemente Der Staatskunst, has in some respects a different weltanshauung from that articulated by Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer in his Unbelief and Revolution. Mueller seems to be Thomist in his approach while Groen seems to be a fideist. Yet both men shared Burke's critique of the French Revolution. Both men built on this critique to define and found a neo-Burkean conservative movement in their respective native lands.

Can you give particulars? Something specific that he said that explains his idea about metaphysics? I am having a hard time understanding how someone who was well educated could imagine that the fact that prudential politics is all about particulars could begin to suggest that this represents a reason to reject metaphysics.

But I cannot stand forward and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

But it seems to me that he is not castigating metaphysics itself, rather the faulty isolation of a single metaphysical abstraction from the necessary qualifications and relations by which it is properly understood.

From the other places he denigrates something metaphysical, he often seems to identify particularly the excesses or the poorly done work of theorists: The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes...By these theorists the right of the people is almost always sophistically confounded with their power...imported by the smugglers of adulterated metaphysics...They have much, but bad, metaphysics...with no better apparatus than the metaphysics of an undergraduate...subliming himself into an airy metaphysician...but to the politicians of metaphysics who have opened schools for sophistry and made establishments for anarchy

Against this, it seem also likely that he did not think metaphysics, itself, is guilty of these problems, but rather men who know only a portion of the right metaphysics, and nothing more: They reduce men to loose counters, merely for the sake of simple telling, and not to figures whose power is to arise from their place in the table. The elements of their own metaphysics might have taught them better lessons. The troll of their categorical table might have informed them that there was something else in the intellectual world besides substance and quantity. They might learn from the catechism of metaphysics that there were eight heads more in every complex deliberation which they have never thought of, though these, of all the ten, are the subjects on which the skill of man can operate anything at all.

Maybe I am reading more into this than I ought, and I certainly have not studied this meticulously, but I can't see a clear and definitive abjuration of metaphysics as such here, only of the barbarous, extremist, simplistic so-called metaphysic that reduces men to mathematical objects.

A quick perusal of the links, so perhaps I rely to much on past readings of the man himself. But nowhere do I see in Burke the implied contradictions or inconsistencies touched upon.
Organic change was integral to Burke's view of society and governance, guided by what was and what is, the past and it's constituted present.
His enemy was speculative metaphysics, the creations of rootless pride, the exercise of unhindered experimentation, the enacting of minds & plans fevered by isolation from a lack of faith,respect and the commonality of practice and the great community at large.

Burke realized that men change slowly, if at all. That the customs and laws must be in sympathy with what we are, not how we may be refashioned.
There is more consistency in Burke than will be easily found in others, his roots ran deep. Would that we had some like him.

His enemy was speculative metaphysics, the creations of rootless pride, the exercise of unhindered experimentation, the enacting of minds & plans fevered by isolation from a lack of faith,respect and the commonality of practice and the great community at large.

As succinct and accurate a synopsis of Burke and Kirk as one is likely to find. Thank you. And yes, his roots ran deep - very deep. If one finds inconsistency in Burke the onus is on the discover to determine where he misunderstands Burke.

Professor Feser is one of my favorite bloggers; like me, he sees little advantage in conservatives being shy about their metaphysical presuppositions. This ambiguity in Burke is something that has troubled me, too. Everyone agrees that Burke defended traditional mores and sentiments. What is less clear is whether he thought traditional beliefs/feelings are valuable because they are true and valid or only because they serve some social purposes, ones that the follower of tradition might not even suspect. The authentic conservative position, I would say, must give some traditions moral as well as practical value, and it must affirm that tradition-followers have some valid idea of what they're doing, even if they can't express it apart from the terminology provided by the tradition itself. Some aspects of the human person can only be respected, and some aspects of the natural law can only be followed, within the context of a particular set of shared (traditional) meanings. Standards of modesty and respect for the dead would be obvious examples. Burke makes enough allusions to a divine order that I think he would agree.

Now for something to make people angry: Russell Kirk did a disservice to conservatism by reducing reactionary thought to Edmund Burke and his followers while ignoring the French (de Maistre, de Bonald, Le Play) and German (Hegel, von Haller) schools.

Burkean conservatives are not shy about metaphysics. They boldly reject them. They know that it's better to root your political thought in God and in history than in abstractions. Better to build upon what people are like and what people actually do, on the one hand, and upon the character, actions and words of God, on the other, than to build upon notions like "freedom" or "equality" in the abstract.

Why? Because freedom is an incomplete concept. When people demand freedom, you must ask, "Freedom . . . to do what?" Further, given the plethora of intractable human differences, actual equality is (literally) impossible. That is, equality is easy to conceive and impossible to realize. Even if it were possible, it must come only at the expense of freedom. You can't maximize freedom without minimizing equality; you can't maximize equality without minimizing freedom. Leave people alone and their natural differences quickly and inevitably emerge, as history repeatedly indicates. Given what our past reveals about us, freedom and equality appear inversely proportional. But if you value freedom and equality as highly desirable political and economic conditions -- and not as abstractions -- then you must find some way of balancing them, and that balance is an exercise in historically informed prudence, not metaphysics. Political prudence is an exercise in historical precedent and revelation, not metaphysical abstraction.

Schools of political thought like egalitarianism and libertarianism are rooted in metaphysical abstractions and not in extra-mental reality. They go against the way God has actually made us and treats us Himself; they go against the way we really are and really act. They take too little account, if any, of the infinite variety of historical conditions and circumstances in which we find ourselves at all times, and of which no abstraction can take proper account -- no matter how internally consistent it might be all on its own. Metaphysical consistency and logical validity are not necessarily indicators of political prudence. They might, indeed, lead directly away from it. The world of mental systems in our heads and the world of historical realities outside our heads might be (and often are) radically different.

Any political theory not grounded in concrete historical indicators is free to be foolish. Foolishness always comes at a very high price. Disconnected from history, such theories tend to be too optimistic, not realizing the insurmountable difficulties actually involved in getting us from where we really are to where this abstraction says we ought to be. The result is normally to try to force us into the mold, which means we die -- often by the millions. Metaphysical politics is a killer. Marxism is but one example.

(By the way, notions like multiculturalism and Aryan supremacy are also metaphysical abstractions at the root, cut from the same piece of cloth as libertarianism and egalitarianism.)

Michael, the fact that there are metaphysical abstractions that, taken outside of the proper metaphysical constraints and interrelated concepts, are true perversions of politics, does not mean metaphysics is unsound with regard to politics.

Given what our past reveals about us, freedom and equality appear inversely proportional. But if you value freedom and equality as highly desirable political and economic conditions -- and not as abstractions -- then you must find some way of balancing them, and that balance is an exercise in historically informed prudence, not metaphysics.

One might equally say that the "experience" (read, "the results of experimental trials in the real world") of the last 2 centuries is the result of people willing to try and try and try various experiments without ever first making the appropriate effort to come to grips with the metaphysical underpinnings to true freedom and true political equality (and _responsibility_, and _self-discipline_, and _love_ in the social environment). And they are probably doomed to continued failure as long as sound metaphysical understanding is ignored.

Any political theory not grounded in concrete historical indicators is free to be foolish. Foolishness always comes at a very high price. Disconnected from history, such theories tend to be too optimistic,

I agree with this. Without reserve. I would also observe that any political concrete plan of action that is not informed by sound principles which respect to human nature (both as it is found right now as well as how it was designed and intended by God will necessarily run awry.

Mr Feser, You may wish to read more closely your second link. If there isn't a dash of inconsistency V consistency there you may forward your hat to me and I will eat it sans jelly.
In any event, why suspect that I was bound to the wording of your title or further, that there may be or are conditions that contribute to ambiguity, such as say, inconsistency, and so on.
Net, why quibble?

Mr. Bauman makes some good points (directed, at least partially, against my metaphysical assertiveness); I particularly agree that a concept like "freedom" has no concrete meaning outside a cultural context. Therefore, "freedom" is not univocal between cultures. Therefore, it is analogical or equivocal. Between the two, I would certainly say that it is analogical, meaning that there is a universal element to it. In respecting someone's freedom--however a given culture chooses to do it--that culture gives recognition to a certain universal aspect of human nature, namely our dignity as free beings subject to the moral law. Different cultures are recognizing the same thing in different ways. This universal element is what I meant by conservatism's metaphysical ground, and without it conservatism would be nothing but cultural relativism or amoral cautiousness.

Post a comment

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If
your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same
comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.

Reverse the order of the digits in 31, then type the answer using letters instead of numbers, all lower case. (required):